June 21, 2014 (The Summer Solstice)
Being the change you want to see in the world.
It’s lawn weekend. It’s been two weeks and the grass is calling to be mowed and trimmed … but …
I hate cutting grass! I know it is a wasteful practice and I realized (in mid-mow) that a grass lawn is like being in a relationship with someone who while beautiful, is ultimately one-dimensional, shallow and expensive.
So what do I do about it? Now I would LOVE to turn all of my available space, both front and back yard into food forest, but here in the “white-collar ghetto”, or the suburbs most call it, I can only imagine the sub-surface uproar turning my front lawn into food producing space might engender. There is of course a chance it would go over well, but I don’t want the headache … now.
So I’m looking at ways to move towards an ideal that is less wasteful, more water conserving and might eliminate the bi-weekly sacrifice to the “gods of the suburbs” that lawn mowing is. What I can do is take incremental steps towards a newer take on the suburban possibilities to live well and in synch with Gaia …
My first step is to plant clover in my lawn areas. Clover makes a fantastic first step towards a smarter suburban landscape. First, it is a nitrogen fixer and will feed the fescue (or whatever grass it’s planted with) without the need to buy fossil fuel based fertilizers. Eliminating the practice of dumping chemical fertilizers on the earth reduces the need for fossil fuels (the basis for many of the fertilizers currently dumped on lawns). Also the over use of chemical fertilizers on suburban lawns adds excess nitrogen to the noxious mix of pollutants that are washed into our oceans. This nitrogen are believed to then fosters “algae blooms” which choke off oxygen and creates areas devoid of sea life in our oceans.
Second, a clover and grass mix will require much less mowing AND watering addressing my hatred for mowing and the need to conserve water during California’s worst drought in years … that is a win-win-win!
So here then at the longest day of the years that I take the first baby-step of many more that must come.